Touchscreen holdout? This F(x)tec Pro1 X phone with sliding QWERTY keyboard might push your buttons
- Reference: 1603820289
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/27/fxtec_pro1_x/
- Source link:
Phones with a physical keyboard are a rarity in 2020. Making this device even more unusual, F(x)tec has opted to offer punters a choice of operating systems: the privacy-centric Android fork LineageOS, Ubuntu Touch, and (the somewhat aged) Android 9.0. Support for Windows 10, SailFish, and Debian is reportedly in development.
In terms of form factor, you get a fairly standard candybar design with a 6-inch AMOLED display. Shift its orientation to landscape, and you can then slide out the phone's 66-key physical keyboard. There's also a USB-C port, which, in addition to charging, allows the phone to connect to an external monitor and peripherals.
[2]
Under the hood, there's a Snapdragon 835 platform, paired with 6/8GB RAM and either 128/256GB UFS storage. These are hardly ground-breaking specs, but you're unlikely to buy this phone on the basis of its number-crunching ability alone. You're paying for the form factor.
The camera is a 12MP Sony IMX and comes with a 5MP secondary camera for portrait photography. There's also NFC, a physical headphone jack, and a physical fingerprint reader.
Whoa-o BlackBerry, bam-ba-lam: QWERTY phone had a child. 5G thing's newly styled [3]READ MORE
F(x)tec is crowdfunding the Pro1 X on Indiegogo (usual caveats apply). With early bird pricing, the 8GB/128GB variant costs $649 – or roughly £500. An extra $70 (or £50) gets you 8GB RAM and 256GB internal storage.
Physical keyboards are a touch dated at this point. The form factor was hugely popular in the 2000s, thanks to vendors like Palm, Nokia, and most notably BlackBerry manufacturer RIM. The launch of the iPhone in 2007 changed all that, and the winds of the smartphone industry began to shift in favour of full-screen phones and virtual keyboards.
Most people have moved on (as has, for that matter, the smartphone market), but there are many who enjoy the tactile sensation found when typing on a physical keyboard. Those holdouts have been serviced by an increasingly shrinking pool of vendors including Unihertz, TCL (which, until earlier this year, held the rights to produce BlackBerry phones under licence), and Planet Computers.
This new refresh from F(x)tec is indicative that there's still some demand for phones with a physical keyboard. Separately, we can expect a new 5G-enabled BlackBerry next year, [4]thanks to Austin startup OnwardMobility . But almost 13 years after the iPhone first hit shelves, one can't help but wonder how big that market actually is, and what the long-term prognosis is. ®
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[1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pro1-x-smartphone-functionality-choice-control#/
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/10/27/pro1x.jpg
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/19/new_blackberry_qwerty_phones/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/19/new_blackberry_qwerty_phones/
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: \me likes!
I used to hate touchscreen keyboards / wish only for hard keyboards, but nowadays since I exclusively use Swype it doesn't really bother me enough to switch [back]. What I'd like is a hard-button answer key , so that I can easily pick up a call whilst I am wearing gloves (admittedly, even that isn't as bad as it used to be because I am most often wearing gloves whilst riding, and my helmet Bluetooth is now connected to the handset anyway).
In other words, for me at least, time has moved on and most of the major complaints about touchscreen-only devices have either been directly addressed or merged with other solutions to mitigate the worst of the problems.
Re: \me likes!
I used to hate touchscreen keyboards
...nowadays... it doesn't really bother me enough to switch...
...most of the major complaints...
...mitigate the worst of the problems
In other other words, you know that the thing is inferior but you choose to live with it, and you litter your posts with weasel words to pretend that it's not so bad.
Re: \me likes!
No, it's a balance of compromises. If only my LG swipe keyboard was reliable with its predictions, it's usually easier and faster for me to swipe a reply than I could ever type it. Contrarily, as noted, the LG swipe isn't very accurate especially versus hard keys.
So, for me, it's either speed with less overall accuracy, or slowness with better accuracy. The difference is that I can swipe with one hand, whilst I must type (badly) with two. I say "badly" because I've been exclusively swiping for so long that I have no real smartphone typing skills left worth even mentioning.
So, after all this time, I guess I have indeed embraced touch. However, every time I (am forced to) pick up an iPhone I wonder "How the #!*% can people use this damn thing!!!", so maybe there's that.
Re: \me likes!
Indeed. I've never bought a phone without a physical keyboard. They're garbage. The only reason I use one now is because it was gifted to me. I've had my eye on the Planet Computers devices, but this looks cool too, particularly with the choice of OS. It'll be nice to have some choice when I do get around to buying my next phone.
Re: \me likes!
Don't bother with Planetcom. I have one of the earliest Geminis: it was released in 2018, and its last Android update was - end of 2018. I now have to live with a totally insecure phone.
Would love one, but $649 is an insane amount of money to pay for a phone.
I know; you'd never get a decent iPhone for only that much.
>insane amount of money to pay for a phone.
Functionally it cpyld be compared to a laptop, and more capable than most if of the computers I've spent £1,000 over the decades.
That said, I think a detachable keyboard is the better form factor because:
- The keyboard can be carried over to an upgraded phone (less of an issue in last couple of years)
-should the keyboard fail (I've known keys on Nokias to fail) it can be swapped and the phone retained (and vice versa)
-one might want to use the keyboard during the day, and shed the extra bulk in the evening
-The main phone section might not have a feature the user wants (less of an issue in last couple of years, since phones are largely converging in feature set)
I can't find a detachable phone keyboard on the market any more. One was built for a specific model of Samsung a few years ago, and for a specific iPhone some years ago, but a generic one (Bluetooth could connect it) even in a folding-case format doesn't seem to be available any more. If you find one let me know,. The Cult of St. Steve the Calligrapher has hurt the market.
detachable phone keyboard
I have a Wireless one about phone size, though needs a dongle because it's not BT, OTOH it works better than any BT keyboard I ever had. It has a touch pad and mouse buttons.
I've also a pair of 8" folio cases with USB keyboards. One has mini-USB plug (works with a USB2GO micro plug with integral mini USB socket and one has a USB2GO microUSB plug.
But I've stopped going out, so I use the laptop to type on Viber or email and phone answers the "I'm at the checkout, where are you" calls.
I had to get a paid playstore app for decent support of a UK layout, accented letters etc on Android. EKH or something. Though later Androids are slightly better for non-USA keyboards.
Touch Screens Ignore My Ancient Hands
The modern second rate phones are almost useless for me. A Bluetooth headset or in-car Bluetooth are the only ways calls can be answered. A prodder can sometimes start it to make a call, but answering an incoming call without an assistant, only worked once in 4 years. I thought touch must be cheap to make, but any saving is not being passed on.
Happily the wired house phone not only has service, while mobiles do not have service at home, it can be answered.
It sucks to be old.
Most supposedly smart phones are flat slabs of glass with zero haptic feedback for us to tell if we're holding it the right side up (front to back) or the right way up (head over heels), so answering a call is a crapshoot.
Trying to use "intuitive" swipe gestures proves the fallacy of said claims as it's not in any way, shape, nor form.
I'm "stuck" using a "dumb" (Feature) phone because it's got a headphone jack to plug in a wired headset, it's got physical buttons I can use to determin the device orientation, I can use those same (Tap9) buttons to enter a text message just as fast as I can understand the keypress echos, and it includes a screen reader to tell me WTF is going on. I've tried to use a SmartPhone but neither the Android nor the Apple devices wanted to play nice. I wound up returning the Android & the Apple is buried in a drawer gathering dust. All because it takes a sighted person to start the tutorials on how to use the accessibility features, because they can't be arsed to make such capabilities useable by the very people it's supposed to get used by.
*FacePalm frustrated sigh*
To all those device makers that think a featureless flat slab of glass is a GOOD thing, just you wait until you get old with bad motor control, bad eyesight, & a complete inability to use your own damned devices. Sucks to get old, huh?
Re: It sucks to be old.
Agree fully with which way is up lottery.
Sadly, the designers & marketers are replaced long before they start to consider such useful features.
Re: It sucks to be old.
Exactly. I'm not blind, just impaired, and have limited hand-eye coordination, so a touch screen doesn't work for me either, though I can play Candy Crush on my Blackberry and only sometimes move the wrong piece. The little BB keyboard is hard enough, but touch screens produce too many errors. Swype is totally hostile, sorta like cursive, which I can't do to save my life. I'm hoping the FxTec or something like it becomes available in the US for the Verizon network. The market seems to be aimed 100% at the fully-sighed well-coordinated 18-39 set. There are plenty of customers for niche markets like physical keyboards.
Sucks to get old, huh?
The alternative is not that much better, huh?,
But I do agree about the phones.
I would totally buy one...
...but I already bought a Cosmo, which fulfills my "I need a little portable SSH terminal" needs even better. Sadly it doesn't make a very good _phone_ because the battery doesn't really last long enough and it's a bit big - this would certainly do the job of "One device for work and home" much better, but well... I already have the cosmo and carrying 2 devices isn't _that_ much of a problem when I only use one of them occasionally and tend to only take it places I expect to need it.
(This post from the pub, where I am _technically_ still working)
Caveat Emptor
Indiegogo, eh? Last I remember reading about them in these pages was with regard to the Spectrum Vega+. As I recall, they didn't cover themselves in glory over that.
I miss my HTC's
The Kaiser (TyTN II), Touch pro 2 and Desire Z (the latter actually being what got me on to Android) were great phones.
I remember when I had the Kaiser a friend of mine asked why I didn't have an iPhone, which at the time couldn't do video calling (this could), had a 2mp camera vs the 3.1mp on the Kaiser and topped out at Edge dataspeeds, no HSPDA and no GPS whereas I was running a TomTom app for sat nav driving with mine.
It was a wonder, an actual leap ahead of my old Nokia's and Windows Mobile 6 (iirc) wasn't as bad as people slate it for (most of which probably never had a windows mobile). Certainly better than what an iPhone would offer.
I'd be happy for someone to take the Touch Pro 2's form factor and chuck some modern chipsets in, don't have to be top of the range, last years mid-range phones ran perfectly fast enough to do everything, camera's don't have to be pointlessly over the top (like the 108mp camera on my Note 20 which takes worse pictures than whatever the Note 8 had, at least they weren't all oversaturated and full of bright screaming reds - and the camera module didn't have to stick out so much from the back of the phone) just something functional that'll take a snap to share on social media, as that's what phones do, those who bang on about doing proper photography with a mobile aren't doing proper photography (or at least a very narrow definition of certain aspects).
\me likes!
Count me in as one of those antediluvian "holdouts". My poor old Kyocera keyboarded soapbar is, alas, ready to die, and quite frankly, I don't care if its been 13, or 113 years since the iPhone was foisted upon us. I use a phone for making phone calls and texts , not as a status symbol or mechanism for keeping up with the Jones's. And that it supports LineageOS and will soon SailFish makes it even more attractive.